Alanson Harris (1816 - 1894)

Born 1 Apr 1816 in near Ingersoll, Upper Canada

Ancestors

Husband of Mary (Morgan) Harris — married 10 Oct 1840 in Beamsville, Ontario, Canada

Descendants

Died 3 Oct 1894 at age 78 in Brantford, Ontario, Canada

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Sunny Clark [send private message]

Biography

Alanson Harris is Notable.

Alanson Harris is/was a significant Ontarian .

Mechanically inclined, Alanson ran a sawmill for 15 years before moving to Beamsville, a small town near the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario just east of Hamilton. In 1857, Harris bought a small factory powered by horse power to manufacture a wooden revolving hay rake that had been invented by his father, plus a few other simple farm implements.

Soon Harris was able to buy a steam engine for the shop. He took his son, John, into the business in 1863. John Harris acquired the rights to the Kirby mower and reaper and before long the Harris firm was a strong competitor to Massey.

The Harris and Massey enterprises expanded rapidly and soon the second generation made its presence felt. John Harris visited Auburn, N.Y., and formed a connection with D.M. Osborne Co., with rights to build its harvesting machines in Canada. Meanwhile, Hart Massey formed the same sort of alliance with Walter A. Wood, Hoosick Falls, N.Y., and soon the Massey factory was building "Wood's Celebrated Patent System of Harvesting Machinery."

During the 1870s and 1880s, Canada levied a very high tariff on imported farm machinery, which kept McCormick and the Deering harvesting machines from being much of a threat to the two Canadian firms. However, as the Harris and Massey companies prospered, they waged their own version of the same "harvester wars" that were decimating grain binder manufacturers in the U.S. In his book Harvest Triumphant, Merrill Denison says Canadian farmers were divided into three camps: "… those who swore by Massey, those who swore by Harris and those who swore at both of them."

Although Harris had always been a strong competitor, Massey retained the edge in binder sales until Harris introduced the Brantford open-end binder in 1890. The open-end design of the new machine allowed grain in any length of straw to be successfully cut and tied. This feature didn't mean much to North American or Australian farmers, who usually burned the straw. In Europe and Great Britain, however, long, unbroken straw was valuable for roof thatch, as well as cattle feed and bedding, and Harris began to overtake Massey in the lucrative export market.

That got Hart Massey's attention and he made overtures to the Harris family. In spring 1891, after lengthy and very secret negotiations, the North American public and the implement industry were astonished by the announcement that Massey and Harris would henceforth be known as the Massey-Harris Co., Ltd.

Sources

1. ↑ Canadian Encyclopedia

See also:

• Wikipedia contributors, "Alanson Harris," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alanson_Harris&oldid=722289715 (accessed May 27, 2016).
• http://www.farmcollector.com/company-history/massey-harris-history.aspx?PageId=2#ArticleContent